'Flared brightly, died young' is the epitaph of a trumpeter, taken from a book about jazz. It set the emotional tone for the first of a two-part documentary presented by Alan Cumming - an elegiac fanfare of a programme about the first generation of Aids sufferers. Moving, robust, unsentimental, Flared Brightly, Died Young was held together by music (Village People, Boy George, Queen). It was a great subject for a documentary because it could do what was not possible 25 years ago: explain what was going on. Confusion, prejudice and fear reigned supreme. Aids was the disease that dare not speak its name - and, in some cases, did not know its name. One actor told another he was suffering from a rare form of cancer (and may even have believed it).

It was shocking to learn how gay people suffered beyond the disease itself: the routine sackings, whether they were ill or not, and other shunnings: the cutlery scandals (a dinner party at which gay guests were issued with separate knives and forks which were later sterilised). But the most debasing anecdote was about a gay man up in front of a judge for a petty offence. He was compelled to wear protective clothing and a mask (the courtroom was fumigated afterwards).

I wonder how the judges on Between Ourselves would have reacted to this story. Presenter Olivia O'Leary, whose soft Irish voice has a misleadingly respectful timbre, asked a string of wonderfully probing questions designed to get beneath the judges' wigs. In the dock were Sir Alan Moses, who presided over the Soham trial, and Judge Sally Cahill QC, who specialises in family law. The size of Moses's ego was alarming but at least he has integrity: he never pretended to shrink it. As a boy he wanted to be a bullfighter but has emerged as a heavy-duty intellectual matador instead. He had a wonderful take on the mystique of being a judge - the necessity of not being quite human in the role (while making humane judgments). Cahill was less grand, confessing sympathetically to stagefright on her first day in office. The programme offered an almost comic contrast between male and female. Sally Cahill was able to admit to reasonable doubt. Sir Alan Moses seemed full, as men sometimes are, of not always reasonable certainties.

Manpower dominated this week. The most unusual programme was My Male Muse, which was offered for elevenses and came with a warning from the BBC that the language would be 'graphic' (there seem to be an ever increasing number of these warnings on air). And it was a steamy programme in which presenter/poet Clare Pollard told us how sexually irresistible her husband was, while he laughed along in a helpless kind of a way. We learnt how magnificent he looked doing the washing up in the nude, wearing only a pair of yellow rubber gloves (it was interesting how hands seem to catch women's fancy more than any other male body part).

Yet for all its embarrassment, the case made was a thought-provoking one. And it was worth listening to for the beautiful poem ('The Keening') by Penelope Shuttle about her late husband, the poet Peter Redgrove. But why are male muses in short supply? The BBC was a little prudish about finding out: not feeling that they had gone far enough with their initial warning, they also put an electronic beep into Eva Salzman's wry, raunchy poem about having sex with labourers on building sites. I've always joked about how hard it would be to subedit a poem; I never thought I'd hear one with a bleep - an auditory fig leaf - in it. Not that anyone would have been in any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, about the missing word.